I’ve
been an outreach worker for about a month and a half now—I spend my days
walking around downtown New Orleans seeking out the homeless people and trying
to help them with whatever they need help with. I try to help them find
direction, find motivation, find resources, find anything. I’ve seen terrible
things (thing I can’t unsee) and wonderful things (things I don’t want to
unsee). I’ve seen people at their lowest eating out of garbage cans and smoking
cigarette butts they find on the ground, and I’ve seen people at their happiest
when they receive the phone call that they got the job they would’ve done
anything to get.
I’ve
heard stories of struggles that shaped lives that are also shaping my life. I’ve
made genuine friendships with clients, and struggle to get others to talk to me
even after daily contact. I’ve been cursed out and I’ve been proposed to. I’ve
been told to leave and I’ve been begged to stay. I’ve been cried to and I’ve
been laughed to. I’ve experienced days I can’t put into words—both negative and
positive. And despite the rollercoaster of emotions this job has delivered, I’ve
loved every single second of it.
Today
was an example of a good day. About three weeks ago I was walking around the
ferry landing on the Mississippi River and I approached a cardboard box under a
bush. There was a man asleep inside and I woke him up (as nicely as possible
because I know I absolutely hate being woken up). He was sleeping in his
McDonald’s uniform after a 12 hour shift and was getting a little bit of rest
before his next shift started.
I asked
him a few standard questions and learned a lot about him. He lives in the box
with his brother whom he takes care of. His brother is mentally ill and he has
been watching out for him for several years now. He doesn’t look at it as his
responsibility though; he looks at it as more of a privilege. He and his
brother have been homeless for 1.5 years, relying solely on his income (the
brother is not able to work due to his disability). He had been unemployed for
a while though and had just landed the job at McDonald’s a week prior. Boy was
he happy. And I’m sure his managers were happy too, because right from the
get-go he was working 45+ hours per week. But despite his work ethic, he couldn’t
afford to feed both himself and his brother while saving up for a deposit and
first month’s rent for an apartment.
Today,
I watched these boys sign their new apartment lease. My client works hard (really
hard), and he is also a wonderful caretaker. Bad luck brought them to the
streets and I couldn’t stand that they were sleeping together in a box. I got
them into our Rapid Rehousing program (where we pay their deposit and first
three months of rent) and within a day I helped them find an apartment they
loved.
It isn’t
much: It is a studio apartment, consisting of one bathroom, a closet-sized
kitchen, and a living room. But it is their apartment. Their names are on the
lease. They have a bed, and a rocking chair, and a shower, and an air
conditioning unit, and most importantly, a door to lock. My client’s brother
had picked out a sailboat painting at our warehouse to hang on their wall
(which had some marker doodles from a previous owner’s toddler), and he walked
it through the front door proudly. Although my client hates the painting and
said it’s too loud, his brother responded, “you’ll learn to love it, it brightens
up the place.”
As my
client was signing the lease I looked over at his brother: He had found a broom
in the closet and was already sweeping. He swept all three rooms and moved all
the furniture to get to the difficult spots. He looked at me and said, “This is
our place now, people are going to have to take their shoes off at the door.” You
could see the pride beaming from him, and when we returned to doing our
paperwork I kept my eyes on his brother as he walked outside and began to
dance.
